A blog about our experiences, frustrations and excitement about building a Ryan Homes Ravenna Model.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

#8 - Disaster-Proof (cross fingers)

Those of you who live on the east coast may have noticed something amiss on Tuesday, as the earth shook beneath your feet while you were simultaneously looking at the severe thunderstorm warnings for Thursday and tracking the biggest monster of a hurricane we have seen in a century. Yes indeedy. Its Armageddon out there.

And so far, our Ravenna is holding up.

The earthquake did no visible damage - our project manager told us that the house was built to withstand at least the amount of shaking we experienced. So, earthquake proof? <check>

Floodproof? <check> With 2 sump pumps, good grading and good soils underneath, we haven't seen a drop of water anywhere on the property, despite the fact that we have had almost a foot more rain than is normal for this time of year. And we've got another foot of water coming as we welcome Irene to our coastline.

Unfortunately, I expect some wind damage this weekend to both my homes. Winds are predicted to be sustained at up to 60 mph here, with gusts of 75mph. That's enough to do some serious damage to newly planted trees, not to mention siding and shingles. But those things can be fixed easily, and are expected in weather conditions that are going to be so severe.

I hope that all my blogger friends take precautions and stay safe as the hurricane blows by. This hurricane is not a joke, and we will probably be talking about it for a very long time to come.

6 comments:

Yes, I hope that the storm does not cause too much damage! I'm glad we go to settlement AFTER the storm! We settle on Wednesday...so fingers crossed for minimal damage. We dodged the earthquake, now we just need to dodge the storm!

We are worried about things as well...we have a bunch of small cracks in the basement floor after the earthquake..waiting for response back from PM about them. Just sent him an email asking if the sump pump would be hooked up just in case...I know the drain in our basement walkout has a cover on it to keep construction stuff and dirt from getting in the drain and clogging it and there is an overflow drain that is attached to the sump pump well...but if we get 10 inches of rain that will fill the sump pump up for sure.

LOL...as soon as I posted the comment I got a response back from PM regarding sump pump. His response was "Sump pump is hooked up and ready. Went to store today and got extention cord so it is currently working"....He's AWESOME!!!!

Chelly - did you already have your final inspection? Make sure you walk the house really well before you go to settle. It would be totally normal to lose shingles and siding in a storm like that, and you want that to be the responsibility of Ryan Homes, not Chelly!

BD- wow, i'm really glad they have the sump pump hooked up and ready. But, you do know you are on the best soil in the state, right? Really well drained, just a wee bit too flat....

About Me

I bought my first home at 22 and have lived here for almost 12 years, riding out the ups and downs of life and the real estate market. Two years ago, I met "BF" and we've been house hunting for almost a year. After looking at dozens of houses in person, and hundreds (thousands?) online, and after one failed offer, we found ourselves at the Ryan Homes model house fantasizing about building a new house. We started looking at the Venice, but eventually realized that the house we really wanted was the Ravenna. When the prices dropped 20k, and after a little nudge from BF, we signed the papers on a Ravenna, and I started this blog...